A Savage Peace
by SummerSiren
Summary: The Second World War has inflicted wounds that Alec Hardy isn't sure will ever heal. After leaving the military, he moves to Broadchurch to lick those wounds and try to find some peace. His retreat is soon shattered by a horrific murder, and what's worse is that the town's only female police officer is keen to help, whether he wants her to or not.


They kept saying the war was over. It was over and everything would go back to normal now. Peace had arrived, and the healing would follow soon after.

Alec Hardy's war wasn't over.

How could it be? How could his life return to what it had been before the world had descended into chaos? How did he go back to who he had been, a man with a job and a routine, when every time he closed his eyes he say it: the twisted bodies, broken towns, and worse of all the—the—

Hardy shook himself, hard. If he tried to shut it out it would be worse. His hands trembled and bile rose up in his throat, burning his esophagus. It wasn't over it would never _be_ over. Not for him. Not after what he'd seen in Germany.

It took him a few long moments to regain control over himself. He had to repeat things to himself. He had to recite the facts, basic truths that reminded him of where he was. It was the only thing that worked when the panic struck. He did so now: _I'm in Broadchurch, in England, it's 1946. I'm a police officer, Wessex police, the war has been over for thirteen months. I am alive. The war is over and I'm alive. I'm in Broadchurch, in England, it's 1946. I'm a police officer…_

 _I'm alive. It's all over. I'm alive._

When he'd calmed down, really calmed down, he allowed himself to focus on his surroundings. It was very early in the morning, and he was sitting alone on the beach. Off to his left were huge cliffs, the one distinguishing feature of this otherwise unremarkable town. He'd lived in Broadchurch for a month and he hated it. It was as if there had never been a war here, what with all the summer holiday rentals and the quiet cheerfulness of the permanent residents. Of course appearances could be deceiving: at least three young men in this idyllic hamlet had been killed during the fighting. But watching the people, you'd never know. They chattered excitedly about the end of the rationing, about the children returning to London to reunite with their families after spending the war in the countryside, about the return of a male working force and how surely that would boost the Empire's economy.

For Broadchurch, the war was over.

Hardy sighed and dragged his hands down over his face. He looked a mess, he knew: unkempt beard and untamed hair. Sloppy tie, loose suspenders under a wrinkled vest. His jacket was sandy now but he swung it on anyway. It was time to be getting to work. Not that there was much work to be done. Broadchurch was a safe place, and that made his job easy. It also made his job dull.

Perhaps that was just what he needed. He doubted it though.

* * *

Ellie Miller was a war widow. The words still rankled, still tasted bitter in her mouth. She had lost Joe two years ago during a battle in India. It was all so absurd. Her gentle husband hadn't traveled any further than London al his life, but he'd been killed in a battle halfway across the Empire in a town with a name she could barely pronounce. To make things worse, the war had ended barely a year later. Just a single year.

Her heart felt so tired sometimes.

But she couldn't give into her grief. That was too selfish and she had to think about more than just herself. She had two boys to care for. Fred, her youngest and just a toddler, looked so much like his father it hurt. He had never met his father. He'd been conceived on one of Joe's all-to-brief leaves of absence. It had been the last time Ellie had seen him. Soon after his unit had gone to India to fight the Japanese. Sometimes she was afraid she'd forget what Joe had looked like, but all she had to do was study Fred's face and she was reminded. Tom, her eldest, looked much more like his own person. Joe was in there, of course, in his eyes especially, but she could see her sister and Joe's father in him as well.

He squirmed out of her hugs these days. She worried about him: he was an angry young boy on the verge of manhood. Angry because the war had stolen his father and angry because he was barely a teenager but he was already the man of the house and angry because he knew, even with Ellie working as a police officer, he would have to get a job soon as well. Any ideas he'd had about leaving Broadchurch had died with his father. His future was waiting for him on the fishing boats moored in the harbor. It wasn't what any young boy dreamed of.

Ellie didn't blame him for being angry. She was angry, too.

Her only consolation was her jo. She loved being police. Before Joe had died, she hadn't been able to apply. Only unmarried women could be police back then. As a widow, she'd been able to take a job with the police the year before. She could even make arrests. The DCI hadn't been thrilled about a mother taking the position but the war had been in full swing and he'd been desperate to fill the ranks.

She hadn't accepted his hints that perhaps, now that peace had returned, she should resign and live off of the pension she received from the government. Ellie was entitled to money as a war widow but she hated it. Instead, she asked her sister to mind her boys while she worked and made hard to sure she was too good an officer to lose her job. Only by being the best could she afford to ignore the pressure to quit.

She told no one about her hopes of becoming a detective. That was, she knew, completely out of the question. It was better to be satisfied with her lot: after all, she _was_ on the force and her DCI hadn't forced the issue of her resignation yet. She kept that secret desire close to her heart and did the work she was assigned.

Her duties were straightforward: she could patrol and she could gather evidence of illegal activity. She could keep watch over lost children or suicidal women. She could not carry handcuffs. If she saw something blatantly illegal, he had to notify a male officer so he could take over. She was allowed to work in the CID and she did, but she could not become a Detective Constable.

She was also the only female officer in Broadchurch and she was paid less than everyone else in the bullpen. That part was a bit frustrating but she loved her job. She didn't let anything deter her, especially with two children to feed.

Like she did every weekday, she saw Tom off to school and took Fred over to her sister's. Lucy accepted her squirming nephew and then peered Ellie over. Her eyes were critical.

"You'd think, working with all them men, you'd have remarried by now," she said.

Ellie tried and failed to not be annoyed. "I don't want to be remarried, thanks. They'd kick me off of the police force."

"They wouldn't. Didn't that rule change earlier this year?"

"Yes, well. I'm sure if I married, my DCI would find a way to replace me. He's only kept me on because he knows I need the money. I don't want to give him an excuse to get rid of me."

Lucy snorted. "At least think about it, El. It's been two years. Fred's going to need a man about the house, and Tom—"

"I've got to go, Luce." Ellie's tone was brisk and brooked no argument. "Be good for your auntie, Freddikens."

With one last kiss for her son, she slipped away and began to walk to the station. It was only two miles but that was enough to help her shake off her irritation at Lucy's words. Honestly, she didn't _want_ to marry again. She'd been happy with Joe, very happy, but she felt old and too independent these days to try her hand at romance once more. Besides, who would want to court an out of shape mother of two like her? The flower of her youth had long since blossomed. More than that, she enjoyed being alone. She had a routine, her life had rhythm and meaning. Why mess with what was working?

Or mostly working, she amended, wishing she could somehow lighten her eldest son's burdens.

With a sigh, she entered the police headquarters. It was time to set aside her personal worries and assume her professional ones. Their new DI didn't take kindly to distracted officers. He was pacing in his office like a caged wolf; back and forth, back and forth, too lean to be healthy and in a permanently foul temper. Ellie wondered what his problem was today. Alec Hardy was a shit boss: too mean and too impersonal, but even she had to admit he was born to be a detective. His dogged and even obsessive pursuit of the truth was easily apparent, and then of course his reputation had preceded him. He'd closed a record number of cases during his seven-month tenure with the met. By the time he'd come to Broadchurch he'd been a bit of a celebrity in the bullpen.

The ardor faded quickly once everyone realized what an arsehole he was.

Back and forth, back and forth, his face sour beneath the fringe of bangs that was flopped over his forehead. Everything about him was rumpled, especially his suit, and Ellie couldn't help but bristle a bit at the sight. Her own uniform was immaculately pressed, each hair smoothed into place. Even the lines of her stockings—stockings! After six years without them!—were perfectly centered down the backs of her legs.

She sniffed and took a seat at her desk. First she'd do her admin work, then she was off on patrol. Good thing, too. She could leave DI Grumpy Face behind and enjoy the fresh air. Bolstered by those happy prospects, she hummed her way through her morning paperwork.

* * *

Broadchurch had always been Ellie's home. She knew every inch of it and loved it with a ferocity that no outside could have understood. People came to swim and bathe in the sea every summer and they all agreed it was a pleasant enough town, but to Ellie it was a slice of heaven on Earth. Even the crumbling old cliffs were dear to her.

She knew every resident and had for most of her life, with the exceptions of the vicar and Becca Fisher, both recent imports to Broadchurch. In the last year the newest generation of the old families had begun piecing their loves together after the war and the older residents were keen to get back to their traditional ways. These people, her people, were not flashy or posh, but hardworking and friendly. If their Empire was in financial crisis if Britain was no longer the world power it had been just a few years ago, well no one in Broadchurch was keen to accept it. They were patriotic, law-abiding subjects of His Majesty King George VI. Ellie was proud to belong to these people and proud to serve them and they rewarded her with a sense of family and community that she was certain no one from a big city would understand.

Certainly Hardy didn't understand it. He treated them all like backwater provincials. Ellie was determined to change his mind. Somehow.

She walked her beat down the high street and through the neighborhoods, up onto the cliffs and back along the beach. People called out greetings to her and offered her warm drinks. After all, it was a chilly October day and she had to look a bit windswept after her ramble along the clifftops. She declined with smiles and waves and pressed on.

What a good town. What an uncommonly good town.

She was so content that she began humming again, strolling back toward the high street and the end of her great loop around town. The gloomy day didn't dampen her spirits; in fact, she enjoyed the tranquility of autumn because winters by the sea could be bitter and the summers were always busy with holiday makers—

Screams tore through her happy musings. They were terrible, throaty screams coming from the direction of the high street. Ice shot through Ellie's veins as she broke into a run toward the sound. They went on and on, bloodcurdling, and by the time Ellie arrived at the source a dense circle of townspeople had clustered outside of the Trader's Hotel.

Ellie pushed her way through the concerned residents until she reached the center of the circle. There, collapsed in the street, was Becca Fisher. Her screams were now hoarse moans, almost animal, and she was as pale as a ghost. Something had shocked her so badly that she'd stumbled a little way out of the hotel's front doors and then gone boneless and crashed into the ground.

"Becca! Becca, what is it? What's wrong?" Ellie demanded. The blonde woman just shook her head, still moaning, and pointed back toward the hotel.

Shaken, Ellie left Becca in the care of some of her friends and entered the building. It was quiet; there were very few visitors to Broadchurch in the off season, and even less since the war. Everything appeared to be tidy and undisturbed, but a warm gust of air caught Ellie's attention. There was something else, a foul smell something like the way the fishing boats smelled in the summer, but worse. Worse. Something like blood and rot…

The warm air led her to and open door and stairs which dropped down into the cellar. The smell was worse: dead fish left too long in the sun. No…that wasn't quite it, it was _worse…_

She took the steps down slowly. Her stomach was already protesting. Becca had left the light on, but there were still deep shadows in the corners. Ellie moved away from the stairs, feeling as though she were pushing her way through deep mud. The smell was overwhelming now and vomit forced its way up into her mouth, the acid burning her throat before she managed to swallow.

She saw it: a tumble of bricks that had come loose from the wall near stacks of dusty furniture. A decent section of the wall had come apart and when Ellie walked closer she saw that the mortar between the bricks had crumbled away. They'd been set back in the wall without fresh bonding material, and Ellie guessed that Becca had been moving the furniture around when she'd struck the unsecured bricks and knocked them loose, creating a cavity in the wall.

The smell was unbearable now.

She forced her legs to carry her the final few inches forward. It took a small, hellish eternity to reach the putrid opening. She told herself it was probably a dead animal or even a family of dead animals, and she clung to that as she steeled herself to look inside. This was a good town, after all, an uncommonly good town—

She looked in. Then she turned, stumbled away a few steps, and threw up at last.

The thing she had seen, the thing she was smelling, was no dead animal. But if it was indeed human, then this was no longer an uncommonly good town. This was the birthplace of a monster.

* * *

 **A/N :** I'm going to apologize right away for any historical inaccuracies. Some of them may be deliberate for the purposes of the stories, but there is every chance that I'll have made a mistake because I'm a historical enthusiast, but not a historian. If you notice something especially stupid, please do point it out so I can correct it!

The battle that Joe Miller died in is the Battle of Kohima, where British and Indian troops fought and defeated the Japanese in northeast India. Hardy, meanwhile, served in Europe in the 11th Armoured Division.

Women have served as police in Britain since 1914, but there wasn't a female DC until 1973. That was the same year that the Women's Departments were integrated into the regular force. Married women were not allowed to be police until the year 1946.

I found myself completely entranced by the idea of Hardy as a former soldier suffering from PTSD in the wake of WWII, and I thought maybe others would be as well. I'm anxious to hear your thoughts and I hope you enjoyed reading!


End file.
